EXCLUSIVE: MARVEL AT RISK TO LOSE WOLVERINE RIGHTS
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In breaking news that is shocking the comic book world, WolverineFiles.com has learned that Marvel Comics is at risk to lose rights to one of its most popular characters, Wolverine.
At issue is a contract between Marvel Comics, the current publisher of Wolverine, and Twentieth Century Fox, a subsidiary of News Corporation and producer of the big budget ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ movie.
According to legal experts, News Corporation lawyers added a clause giving Twentieth Century Fox complete rights to Wolverine upon release of the movie, as well as complete rights to all other Marvel Comics’ characters appearing in the movie.
With U.S. release slated for May 1, 2009, it seems that News Corporation will take over ownership of Wolverine, Sabretooth, Deadpool and several other Marvel characters in a little over a month. This is not unprecedented as News Corporation retained rights to the “Watchmen” movie through a similar legal loophole, eventually extracting distribution rights from Paramount Studios.
Marvel Comics is reportedly working on contingency plans in the event that their planned injunction against News Corporation fails. Potential plans include a new publishing schedule to wrap up existing story lines from the main title, ‘Wolverine’, and sister title, ‘Wolverine: Origins’.
As this story began to leak, several Marvel writers weighed in with their thoughts.
Legendary X-Men scribe Chris Claremont said, “It really is unfortunate to lose a character of this complexity. Even more unfortunate is that I will never be able to tell the true origin of the character that I have been planning for the past 35 years.”
Prolific writer Brian Michael David Bendis (New Avengers, Dark Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate Origins, Powers, Daredevil) was more philosophical, “Is this is a sad day for Marvel? It is. It really is.”
WolverineFiles.com has learned that Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada will soon be releasing a statement which, in part, will read, “As much as it is an anathema to me personally, we may need to remove Wolverine from Marvel continuity entirely. I hope we can seamlessly achieve this goal with the full support of the fans, much like we did with Spider-Man and ‘Brand New Day.’”
If this eventuality does comes to pass, the final Wolverine story, the final appearance of the character in the Marvel universe, will reportedly be entitled ‘Wolverine: Prima Aprilus’.
More details to come as they become available…
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It would have sounded a bit more plausible had you indicated that MVL and Fox had a dispute regarding the film rights of Wolverine.

After all, the Chicago Herald-Tribune currently has a court case with Warren Beatty over the film rights to Dick Tracy, and the Salkinds ended up in a contentious relationship with Warner Bros over Superman. In a similar case, the Salkinds had bought the film rights to Superman for 25 years in the 1970’s. When the Salkinds decided that they did not want to deal with Warner Bros. anymore (after Supergirl), so they sold the temporary rights to Cannon and we got Superman IV. Warner Bros. could not do anything, since the Salkinds had a contract giving them 25 years of control. All manner of legal troubles resulted from the Superboy TV show.